:::The Desi Flavor:::

Yoga booming in China

Yoga is apparently getting popular amongst the Chinese youth and an exhibition (2005 China International Yoga Show and Conference) is planned next month to further educate the masses about the practice. Event is expected to attract over 300 exhibitors.

"India would have the best exposure during the show since yoga originated from India", he said.

"We plan an Indian culture site aiming to introduce the background of Indian culture and the deep meaning of yoga fitness to the audience," he said, adding that live performances would give visitors an opportunity to experience the power of yoga.

The organisers of the event have also invited a Bangalore-based Indian yoga music group to perform during the show.

Related:
: Yoga Basics: online guide to the practice of yoga, pranayama, postures, poses, asana, breathing and meditation.

: Can you copyright a yoga move?

: Yoga adapting to changing times - Yoga catering for people with different lifestyles and tastes

: Want to try African yoga?

Fake Wedding guests

An Indian firm which rents out wedding guests says business is booming.

The Best Guests Centre, at Jodhpur in Rajasthan, is looking to expand across the state.

The company caters for families who fear they will fall short of guests at weddings.

It hires out guests, either traditionally dressed or wearing smart western clothes, according to requirements and budget.

The guests dance and try to impress with their etiquette without letting anyone know they are being paid for it.

Proprietor M I Syed briefs his staff about the groom, the bride and their families before the wedding to avoid a faux pas.

He told The Statesman: “The breaking up of joint families and lack of affection among relatives also creates a demand for paid guests.

"Such families need to hire guests to make up for the fewer number of relatives available for attending the marriage.”

More here.

Lahore Carpet Industry

Metroblogging Lahore has a feature on carpets and the carpet industry in Lahore. Via Global Voice Online

Related:

: Combating child labour in the carpet industry

The project, Combating Child Labour in the Carpet Industry in Pakistan, is based on an agreement signed between the PCMEA (Pakistan Carpet Manufacturers' and Exporters' Association) and the ILO in 1998. The agreement outlined the PCMEA-ILO partnership to eliminate child labour in the carpet industry in Pakistan. The project, which started in 2002, aims to provide non-formal education, mainstreaming, and pre-vocational education to about 23,000 carpet weaving children, and access to micro credit to the 1,000 poorest carpet weaving households. The first phase of the project was successfully implemented in three districts (Gujranwala, Sheikhupura, and Hafizabad) and, in the second phase, the project has been expanded to three other districts (Multan, Faisalabad, and Toba Tek Singh).

 

More current details can be found at the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour.

: Child slavery in the carpet industry

: More from Global March

The Bonded Labour Liberation Front estimates that eight million children are bonded in Pakistan. Half a million are allegedly bonded in the carpet industry alone. A UNICEF report estimated that there are 1.2 million children are engaged in the Pakistan carpet industry. A minimum of 250,000 children live and work in brick kilns in complete social isolation. They are totally illiterate and have no hope of escaping from this inferno. In fact these children are bonded labourers, driven into this miserable state by the fact that their entire families have been ‘pawned’ to the owners by virtue of their having pledged their labour in return for so-called ‘advances’ taken, sometimes by their ancestors, which, even after the entire family having toiled for years on subsistence wages in prison-like conditions, is not accounted as repaid.

Meet the Magoons

"Meet the Magoons is the story of a group of mates (Hardeep Singh Kohli, Sanjeev Kohli, Nitin Ganatra and Paul Sharma) for whom ketchup, chaos, country slices, tandooris, turbans and transvestites are all in a day's work.

The action is set around The Spice, a Punjabi curry house in Glasgo,where the day-to-day running of the business comes second to the cock-ups and cover-ups of the Magoons. If they're not encountering drug-smuggling samosa suppliers, they're being busted by an all-female police hit squad! squad!"

You can catch up on Meet the Magoons tonite on Channel 4 at prime time.

Related:
: Meet the Magoons - a review of the upcoming comedy

: The Scotsman interviews Hardeep Singh Kohli, the writer of the sitcom

Kohli grew up in Bishopbriggs and served time as a waiter in Glasgow restaurants owned by his cousins. It appears to have been the catering equivalent of boot camp and an experience he is now richly mining for comedy material. He bluntly summarises his restaurant work as "a 360 degree experience - from the shite outside to the banter and the crack inside the kitchen. It's two different worlds."

Channel 4 is giving Meet the Magoons a peaktime 9.30pm slot on Fridays and trailing it relentlessly during ad breaks. Kohli has thanked the network for "not hiding behind ghetto scheduling" in allocating a prime broadcast time, but bridles at any suggestion he is attempting an ethnic sitcom. He has been invited to sit on a panel about diversity at this year's Edinburgh television festival, but insists his sitcom has no agenda other than simply being funny.

"It's curious people ask me questions like that but they would never ask John Cleese: 'did you write a white comedy?' They would never ask David Walliams and Matt Lucas [creators of Little Britain] 'do you write quintessentially white comedy?' It's just assumed they write the comedy from their experience.

"Everything in my show, one way or another, is something that I've experienced. It just so happens I've experienced it with predominantly brown people in the frame. It's difficult enough writing comedy that's funny, let alone writing to fulfil other criteria. You've just got to write from the heart, and from the soul, whatever comes out, comes out."